# GFI MailEssentials Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra

> Is GFI MailEssentials the right Email Security solution for you? Explore 11 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice.

Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/88914/GFI-MailEssentials/reviews

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GFI MailEssentials

3.4 (11)

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Last updated March 13th, 2026

# Reviews of GFI MailEssentials

Ease of use

3.5

Customer Service

3.3

## Showing most helpful reviews

Showing 1-11 of 11 Reviews

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Most Helpful

Rating

Company Size

Reviewer's Role

Length of Use

Frequency of Use

Matt E.  
Network Architect  
Consumer Services  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "An OK spam solution"

June 5, 2018

2.0

Pros

Administration is easier then on some of the other spam solution products I've used. Also one of the cheaper spam solutions.

Cons

The filters are sub par at filtering. Even after verifying hardened settings. Too much spam still gets through.

Review Source

VR

Verified Reviewer  
CIO  
Education Management  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Great Email security product"

November 9, 2021

4.0

We used GFI MailEssentials to fight SPAM and Email viruses, it served us well for several years and its highly recommended for SMBs

Pros

The software is easy to implement, friendly interface, lots of useful functions and customizations.

Cons

nothing in particular. we didn't face any problems with our setup and the regular updates had been converging most issues.

Review Source

JM

Jared M.  
Systems Administrator  
Leisure, Travel & Tourism  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "Brain-dead easy to manage, but brain-dead stupid software"

September 12, 2018

2.0

Pros

I suppose the management interface is generally intuitive, though something as simple as whitelisting an individual address or domain can be stupidly cumbersome. Oh, that email address your manager asked you to whitelist still isn't being allowed through? Better make sure you hit 'apply' in both areas, including the more hidden one not readily apparent from the section you enter the email address. Support is fairly responsive, but I have not once had a serious issue resolved by them and isntead referred to their published knowledge base myself. This is not the fault of their support, but instead limitations of the software itself.

Cons

Where to begin? Extraordinarily limited anti-spam, anti-spoof and antivirus engines cause so much spam to waltz through on an hourly basis. It is an absolute embarassment of a product that is humiliating to our department - we've switched to Mimecast which we hopefully plan to implement in the next few weeks. We were saved by our endpoint antivirus software, mercifully, when an email spoofing our domain recently was sent to nearly every user in the company simultaneous attached with a crypto payload in a word doc. It is inexcuseable for software this poorly functioning to be marketed and sold at the price they are requesting. This may be particular to our environment due to the nature of our business and the tremendous email volume, so a smaller company may have success with it.

Review Source

Shawn B.  
President  
Information Technology and Services  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Set it and Forget it AntiSPAM product that we use for most of our non-Office365 Clients"

May 14, 2018

4.0

Pros

The Installation is fairly quick and easy. GFI has a host of add-ons so it makes it easier to piece-meal the products you want to add to your deployment. Love the end-user SPAM/Quarantine Access. The Daily Digest feature is excellent, clients like the reports they get daily.

Cons

Can get cumbersome if you start going into the minutiae. The Licensing part I'm not very fond of, if you go over the quantity the software simply stops working after a week or so of grace-period. I would prefer if they sent email reminders when License renewal is closer. Customer Service is hard to get a hold of.

Review Source

VR

Verified Reviewer  
Director of IT  
Hospital & Health Care  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "System administrator "

April 24, 2018

4.0

Pros

It's very easy to install system. Mostly the default configuration works out of the box without any problems.

Cons

The system is somewhat easy to use. They have a lot of limitations when you try to do advanced configuration load or reset spam lists.

Review Source

VR

Verified Reviewer  
IT Manager  
Medical Devices  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Anti Spam / Email security is lack luster"

December 12, 2023

3.0

Pros

GFI Mailessentials was very cheap compared to other solutions.

Cons

The protection it covers when compared to the current threats in the market

Review Source

ET

Eric T.  
I.T. Supervisor  
Utilities  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "We have used GFI Mail essentials for the past two years to archive our email for our users to access"

February 9, 2018

4.0

The ability to quickly and effectively archive our emails and retrieve them via a simple web browser gui.

Pros

It has performed very well as far as the archiving of our emails. Our users are able to retrieve their own emails for themselves therefore reducing the administration overhead of doing the same tasks ourselves.

Cons

There are only a few gripes and most are minor. One being the amount of segmented archives that seem to get created. Integration with our domain was a little tricky.

Review Source

VR

Verified Reviewer  
IT Administrator  
Information Services  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "Spam Filter"

February 19, 2019

3.0

Pros

We used this product for few years and then moved to another product . When we used, it worked okay. Open source was the plus that I noticed and self hosted is another.

Cons

We had some issues with legit emails getting tagged as false positives.

Review Source

VR

Verified Reviewer  
Senior Systems Engineer  
Information Technology and Services  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "SPAM filter"

April 23, 2019

4.0

I used to use this before switching to Barracuda.

Pros

This is a good solution and fairly easy to use

Cons

Doesn't scale up well in my opinion, hard when you want to managed a large system.

Review Source

JR

John R.  
CIO  
Accounting  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "A bit finicky"

October 22, 2018

4.0

Pros

Once you get it configured it does a great job of filtering out spam.

Cons

Loves to crash in the middle of the night and fill users boxes with spam.

Review Source

KS

Kenneth S.  
Vice President  
  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "Overall a good service"

December 12, 2017

3.0

Pros

GFI MailEssentials does a good job of controlling SPAM. Administration is easier than some similar products but not as easy as others.

Cons

Administration requires some IT experience for successful implementation and user maintenance. Occasionally it seems like the filters block some non-SPAM items.

Review Source

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